Cambridge peddles ‘toxic nonsense’
Michael Gove has accused Cambridge University of peddling “toxic nonsense” to the next generation of teachers.
The former education secretary warned Cambridge’s Faculty of Education was letting the profession down.
He singled out Prof Hilary Cremin, the head of the university’s teacher-training school, for promoting an educational philosophy that displayed “all the weaknesses of modern academia”.
In a commentary in The Spectator, which he edits, Lord Gove described Prof Cremin’s book, Rewilding Education, as a publication that “doesn’t just display ignorance” but “flaunts and celebrates it”.
“The work actively rejects not just the need for discipline, knowledge and testing in schools but the very idea of our schools themselves,” he said.
Prof Cremin’s book, published in 2025, calls for a stronger focus on children’s emotional development and more nature-based learning, with pupils setting the pace of their own education rather than following standardised lessons and tests.
